~ Commentary from Rutgers urban planning students

Food Planning Options

Food planning is an extremely important topic to focus on, especially with today’s trends in population and health. Over the past few decades, the percentage of overweight Americans has been growing at a rapid and increasing rate. As a result, many health issues like diabetes, cancer, and depression have become a concern. These preventable problems can be linked directly to the failure of food planning.

Generally, people shop for food based on price and proximity. When cheap food is placed closely to the population, it will be the preferred option over healthy food that is further away. Unfortunately, most cheap foods are unhealthy and void of nutrients. They are generally unnatural and processed with nutrients that are artificially added. From a citizen’s point of view, the poor quality of these processed foods can be attributed to the food industry. However, there are two sides to the story. From a food industrialist’s point of view, refined and processed foods are longer lasting and are easier to digest, putting less strain on the digestive system. Some would say that the government is at fault for America’s obesity problem. This could also be true, for the rise in food prices leaves some people with no choice but to buy whatever is affordable, which would most likely be fast food or packaged food.

In order to effectively deliver healthy and natural foods to people, officials need to direct regional economies towards the agricultural market. An easy and efficient way to do this would be by adding farmers’ markets to the communities or by subsidizing farmers’ markets. This would put natural, fresh, and nutritious foods on the market while supporting farmers and the agricultural community. Citizens would get these foods at reasonable prices because the transactions occur directly with farmers without a middleman. Also, by adding farmers’ markets to the public, farmers get to know which foods are in demand and which foods are not. In that sense, they will grow what the people want and less food will go to waste.